


here's how it starts (as beautiful as the rain)

by SinkorSwim



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Bad Fic, Bad Poetry, Bullying, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hospitalization, Kinda, M/M, Physical Abuse, Poetry, Unrequited Love, bullied!liam, unrequited liam payne/andy samuels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:39:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinkorSwim/pseuds/SinkorSwim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“oi, zayn, thats the local pouf, don’t touch it or it’ll hump you like a dog”</p><p>the hallways ring with laughter, like they always do, liam blushes and doesn’t dare look up.</p><p>(if he had, he would have seen zayns golden brown eyes watching him walk away.)<br/>----</p><p>or the one where liam is bullied and zayn is new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here's how it starts (as beautiful as the rain)

**Author's Note:**

> this is the worst thing i have ever written dont look at me
> 
> not brit picked or bete'd so please dont yell at me

liam wakes up on three days before his thirteenth birthday with a cast on his arm and a heart

 

monitor beeping steadily next to his ear.

 

his vision is foggy, stark shapes cast shadows and make it hard to see, and liam is just really

 

disoriented.

 

the shapes are humans he realizes, and the humans are his parents, and his parents are

 

speaking, in that soft comforting way that makes your heart swell and a pit form in your stomach.

 

(liam starts crying)

\----

 

liam remembers blood and bruises and blurry figures

 

he remembers dirt and broken teeth and fingers curled into monsters

 

he remembers _faggot_ and _pussy_ and _you fuckin’ brought this on yourself, pouf_

 

liam remembers lying in his own blood, hoping, praying to a god he didn’t think existed anymore

 

that someone would find him.

 

(liam does not remember what he did to make them so angry)

\----

 

for a while, his parents try and pry it out of him. they ask him constantly,

 

like maybe he would magically remember,

 

who did this to him.

 

who decided that liam wasn’t worth any more oxygen and needed to be torn down.

 

liam doesn’t tell them.

 

liam doesn’t want to tell them.

 

(liam doesn’t think about the school bullies and the oblivious teachers, liam doesn’t think at all)

\----

 

liam has only sprained his wrist so he doesn’t have to keep the cast on for very long.

 

he begs his parents, pleads, even goes so far as to break down crying, so that he doesn’t

 

have to go to school while he still has the cast on.

 

he can’t bare to see the smug looks on the other boys faces as they take in his scarred cheek

 

and immobile arm.

 

can’t even imagine what they might do when they realise they hadn’t finished the job.

 

(his parent’s agree after they see the pure panic grow on liam’s face, after they see and animalistic

 

fear in his eyes that scares even them)

\----

 

here’s how it starts:

 

liam’s just turned twelve and all the other boys are starting to talk about tits and butts

 

and pornstars.

 

and all liam can think about is that his best friend, andy, sorta has a pretty face.

 

(that’s how it starts but that’s not how it ends)

\----

 

someone spreads a rumor around that liam’s parents called the cops and that if you mess

 

with him you’ll go to jail so.

 

no liam isn’t pinched and pushed and punched.

 

he isn’t sent to the nurses office everyday and he isn’t afraid to walk home anymore but.

 

people still call him a _fag_ and a _pouf_ and they still knock his books down and throw

 

food at him in the lunchroom.

 

(liam doesn’t care he doesn’t care he doesn’t care.)

\----

 

so liam lives with it and he takes the glares and the words and the whispers.

 

he walks down the hall and he looks at the people who used to be his friends and wonders

 

where exactly did all this hate come from because he doesn’t get it.

 

he looks at andys pretty face smeared by black anger and curled around an ugly

 

snarled mouth, and those lovely pink lips seem more chapped now, they seem more like a

 

loaded gun that liam never meant to buy the bullets for.

 

(liam walks down the halls alone for three years)

\----

 

and then one day

 

there’s a new face with andy’s but

 

this face is not pretty.

 

this face is the sun in the middle of winter or the spaces between the leaves of a tree.

 

this face is the painless breath between every broken and ragged one and

 

this face is the days and months and years that liam had wished he could have had

 

this face is hope and dreams and love and beauty and everything liam has ever doubted

 

wrapped up into an angular jaw and chocolaty brown eyes that melt every bit of liams icy  

 

armor.

 

(zayn malik.)

\----

 

here’s how it starts:

 

all the other boys start asking girls out and people start going steady.

 

andy and liam walk to and from school together everyday and talk about everything and  

 

absolutely nothing.

 

and it’s ok. liam doesn’t think about the fact that he thinks andy is pretty nice to look at and andy

 

doesn’t notice the way liam stares at his strawberry lips.

 

and then one day, andy gives liam a nudie magazine he nicked off the corner store.

 

(and that’s when it all starts to fall apart.)

\----

 

liam walks past andy and this new face, nearly trips over his own feet, desperately trying not

 

to look at this the gleaming eyes that lit a new flickering flame of hope in liam’s heart.

 

andy sneers at liam as he walks away, stage-whispers

 

“oi, zayn, thats the local pouf, don’t touch it or it’ll hump you like a dog”

 

the hallways ring with laughter, like they always do, liam blushes and doesn’t dare look up.

 

(if he had, he would have seen zayns golden brown eyes watching him walk away.)

\----

 

it rains that afternoon.

 

big, fat drops that soak through your clothes instantly and leave you shivering.

 

liam walks home slowly though. he needs to stay behind the pack of classmates going the same way as him.

 

he isn’t allowed to walk with them anymore.

 

so liam walks alone, lagging behind a group of his old friends as they push each other around

 

and joke and laugh. one by one they peel off, entering different homes, walking down different streets.

 

and then the only people left walking are liam and andy and zayn.

 

andy shoves zayn around tries to joke with him like he used to with liam, like he does now with

 

aiden and josh and stan.

 

but zayn doesn’t shove back. instead he turns, catches sight of liam and waves, just a little bit.

 

andy glances back and scowls at liam, hits zayn’s hand away and says loudly,

 

“mate, no you can’t do that people are gonna think you’re a shirt lifter just like that prick.”

 

zayn knocks andys hand away but turns around anyways, doesn’t look back at liam.

 

(liam decides that maybe, zayn is as beautiful as the rain)

\----

 

here’s how it starts:

 

liam looks through the dirty magazine and doesn’t feel anything, no tightening in his trousers

 

no shortness of breath, nothing. he’s not hard he’s not anything.

 

and then liam starts to freak the fuck out.

 

because andy had just been explaining how easy this made it to jack off and liam didn’t

 

 _feel_ anything and besides.

 

none of the girls in the magazine made liam feel dizzy like andy did and none of them had

 

prettier faces then andy did, and liam didn’t want to kiss any of them more than he wants to kiss

 

andy.

 

(shit. _shit_ )

\----

 

liam spends the next few weeks just watching zayn.

 

it’s not like he could just go up to him in the hallways and introduce himself anyways.

 

but he watches zayn, watches the way his eyes light up when their teacher talks

 

watches the way he bites his lip when he’s reading a book

 

watches the way zayn doesn’t care what the others think, and waves at liam everyday.

 

and yeah, maybe zayn’s just being nice but.

 

(no one has been nice to liam in a long, long time.)

\----

 

one day andy doesn’t come to school.

 

and it isn’t like andy hasn’t ever missed school before but,

 

this time it seems different. because no one really approaches zayn without andy around.

 

so zayn walks around by himself, just like liam has for for 3 years, and it’s weird.

 

liam thinks about perception, and odds and fate.

 

because what was it that made zayn wave at him everyday?

 

and what was it, on that cloudy day where andy and his snarled mouth and sharp words

 

weren’t around, made zayn walk next to liam all the way home?

 

(yes. liam thinks about fate, and hope, and love.)

\----

 

they walk in silence for the most part.

 

the silence swirls around liam, crowds around him, makes the air seem thicker,

 

makes every second seem like a lifetime.

 

they don’t speak, not when the herd of people ahead of them thin out,

 

not when their hands brush and an electricity fills the air, and leaves liams skin tingling,

 

and the hairs at the nape of his neck standing on end.

 

they don’t speak.

 

and then, as zayn peels off in front of a blue house with a yellow door,

 

he turns, waves, just like he does everyday, but.

 

(whispers, “bye, liam.”)

\----

 

liam walks into school the next day feeling like the stars shined a little brighter than the day before,

 

and the birds chirped a little louder that morning, and the clouds were a just a little be fluffier.

 

and everything is just that much _brighter_.

 

until it’s not.

 

he turns the corner and.

 

there’s zayn surround by a circle of people, on the ground looking up at a menacing andy.

 

and andy’s face no longer looks pretty. it looks like a snake ready to pray on it’s next meal.

 

lips chapped, and cracked, and leaking out any love liam once had for him.

 

and his once endearing, rosy cheeks are flushed a dangerous, poisonous crimson.

 

liam looks at zayn, who is looking up at andy,

 

and zayn’s eyes that could melt through any icy heart are hardened, icing over. and well.

 

(liam sees red for the first time in his life)

\----

 

here’s how it starts:

 

liam goes up to andy a few days after he got the nudie magazine.

 

he tentatively looks up at this beautiful boy with flushed cheeks, and cherry lips.

 

looks up at this boy who he has told everything to since before primary school.

 

looks at the boy who punched nick grimshaw in the face for calling liam a baby in year 1.

 

looks at him and mumbles,

 

 _I think I like boys_.

 

and andy reals back, looks as though liam slapped in the face.

 

backs away from liam, anger filling his face like water fills a cup.

 

andy yells at liam as he walks away from him,

 

“don’t you talk to me anymore, don’t even look at me. we’re through. you- you fucking faggot.”

 

but andy doesn’t leave liam alone after that.

 

no. andy wants to watch liam _burn._

 

(and well, three months later liam wakes up in the hospital.)

\----

 

liam walks right up to andy and punches him straight in the fucking nose.

 

there’s a sickening crack, a choked off scream, a gasp from the crowd

 

and a low warning from liam,

 

“don’t you fucking touch him ever again.”

 

he turns in a circle glares at all the faces that have spent years poking and prodding,

 

pinching, pushing, spitting. ruining.

 

stares at their startled, nervous faces, and scoffs in disgust.

 

he bends down and grabs zayns hands, drags him up, and pulls him down the hallway

 

towards the exit, towards a breath of fresh air and a blank page. a redo on the past three years.

 

as he walks away, he hears a muffled shout from the ugly dragon shaped boy he used to love

 

“yeah, keep walking homos.”

 

but there is no laugh from the crowd, no ego-boost for this ugly faced monster that grew from

 

liams old best friend.

 

(and zayn squeezes his hand as they step out into the bright sunlight)

\----

 

here’s how it ends:

 

liam and zayn, walking home in the rain.

 

they are ahead of the pack of students,

 

who they used to call friends.

 

their hands are entwined, fingers interlaced, hearts beating in time.

 

and liam thinks about fate then,

 

thinks about fate and hope and love.

 

thinks about soulmates.

 

thinks about kissing his boyfriend, because he is allowed to, because that’s something

 

that belongs to them.

 

(so. that’s what liam does.)

\----

 

fin.

 

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this sucked so much. i hate the beginning the middle and the end so this is fun.


End file.
